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Every time I take my car in to Big-O, to get my tires rotated or some other simple thing, they find that I need new ball bearings, or new axle hubs, or need to replace the muskrat running around in the engine. This means that a 30 minute stop that is supposed to be free ends up costing me at least $500 dollars and takes all day. If new problems crop up every time I take my car into a shop for any reason, does it follow that if I STOP taking my car into the shop, that things will stop breaking on it?

A couple of years ago we did some work in our living room. (To see details, click here.) After a lot of discussion and debate over a color choice for the walls - which I, of course, won - we picked our color and went to K-mart to buy it. Because it was convenient. I mean, yes, Martha Stewart is pretty awesome. But she also kind of scares me, you know? What scares me more than her, though, is this paint. Look at the finish they gave us. I asked for Satin, but noooooooo.

At the time, we just thought it was funny and had our laugh at the silly paint tech and that was it. But maybe we shouldn't have taken it so lightly. My living room is ALWAYS dusty. Extraordinarily dusty. I have normally blamed Richard for this but lately I remembered this paint, and now I wonder. Have we been cursed? Are our living room walls now possessed? Are we going to be forced to perform an exorcism, or worse, paint over it? And if I do nothing, is this dust just going to keep on building up at an accelerated rate until I am forced to eventually clean in there? Gosh. The Devil really IS in the details.

Sick babies are just no fun. Plain and simple. Friday night Harrison woke up again and I could see he was sick and I forbade him to throw up, but he did it anyway. I DON'T handle vomit well. I just kind of throw my arms helplessly into the air and say "Oh! Yuck! Gross! Help!" Yes, I'm useful to have around in a pinch. Richard is awesome though, so there is that.

On Saturday we had to be at Mimi's Cafe in Orem at 11:30 (where we were having lunch with Harrison’s Birth Mom), and just before we got there Harrison barfed. A LOT. All over. We pulled over to a gas station, stripped him down to his diaper and clean everything up the best we could. I kept asking the universe "Why does it always have to be in the car or in his crib? Why? Why?" They seem like the worst possible places to have to clean up puke. Not that I can think of all that many places where it is nice to clean up puke from, but some variety would be nice once in a while.

Once he was mostly clean, we stopped by Babies-R-Us and got him some clothes and put them on him right there in the store. And then went to lunch where Harrison behaved like an angel. I thought maybe all our troubles were over, but he tossed his cookies again that night, and then again the next morning. And I got my wish. He hurled in our bedroom. So, variety. Yeah. Now our room smells like throw up too. Neat.

Baby sickness is so special. There are so many fluids involved. I won't go into details, I will just say that some of those other, grosser fluids were yesterday deposited on my bedroom carpet. Yeah, that’s a nice addition to the smells in here. It seems easier at this point to just replace the carpets rather than cleaning them. I have quite literally been walking around with a spray bottle of cleaner in my hand. I'm thinking about getting a holster. Moms really do need utility belts. And they would make us look so cool! If anyone is interested, let me know. I've got a guy. I think we can make them work.

Update:
So I had a good long talk with Harrison last night: Explained to him how inconvenient and unpleasant it is for me to clean up stomach contents in the middle of the night, so if it wouldn't be too much trouble, could he please, please not do it anymore? He was pretty non-committal in his response, but I guess I managed to convince him and he decided to give me a break. Last night he didn’t wake up once. Hallelujah.

Facebook has made me nostalgic, so I've been looking at old photos, watching old home movies and yesterday I dug out my box of journals. (Yeah, that's right. It's a whole box full. I'm a very dutiful journal keeper. They always talk about keeping a journal for posterity or something, but there is SO MUCH for my posterity to read, that it really might be best if they just lit the box on fire and ran away.)

So I was looking through my journal from when I was about 14 or so and it was really hard to read. Not because my handwriting was bad (I have always had extraordinary penmanship) but because I was so annoyed. Because I was so annoying! I remember myself a lot differently than I apparently was. I used to always think that I was a pretty easy teenager to raise and didn't give my parents a lot of trouble. But I was wrong. I was an idiot. What I'm remembering must be more their patience than any angelic behavior on my part.

I can't say for sure how I acted most of the time (though working with the Young Women, I have a pretty good idea), but now I know how I thought and I am SO GLAD that I'm not that girl anymore. Because I'm not. I'm not the same girl I was when I was in Jr. High and High School. Who knew?

And Thank Goodness. If I had to be that girl forever I think I might have exploded from an overload of teenage mood swings, or been shot by some do-gooder who knew it was best for society that I go.

So, what is my point, you are asking? I don't really have one. I don't have to have a point you know. I can ramble on and on and never make a point and no one can stop me. But I was thinking about a girl I knew who got married in 7th grade. How old are you in 7th grade? 12 or 13? Anyway, she and her 7th grade sweetheart are no longer together and it is no wonder. No offense to my vast audience of 7th graders, but kids that age don't know anything!! They are like half people; half themselves and their potential, and the other half puberty, hormones, self pity, candy, jealousy and confusion. And Denial. Yep, shockingly clueless, barely functional. And that is why they send them (kids between the ages of approx. 12-14) to special schools, where they can associate with other special kids who are just as backward as they are. Yep. Jr. High.

It doesn't do any good to go to the library. My Library anyway. I mean, it is fun and all, (without a toddler) but they won't have what you are looking for. Unless you are looking for the latest installment in Teen Vampire Fiction, the selection isn't that great, they only carry one copy of each book, and Murphy's Law dictates that the book you are looking for - no matter how obscure - will have been checked out by someone just before you arrive at the library to pick it up. So with 10 or so of us in a bookclub, you have a greater chance of being mugged by a monkey than by being the lucky gal who gets to check out that month's book selection from the library.

This month it is A Tale of Two Cities. Richard claims to own a copy, but it is in a box somewhere, so I looked for it online. I probably could have found it in one of the local used books stores (That's right. We have those. I mean where do you think this is? Payson?) but that would require getting in my car and driving down town and that is not really my style. I found it on Amazon for 75 cents plus shipping. So we held a family counsel and decided that it was a wise investment and I bought it.

A week later, it came. I was surprised at how small the envelope was -- just your run-of-the-mill padded envelope -- since I always understood that "A Tale of Two Cities" was a rather long book. So I open the envelope and what do I see? THIS

Gah!! Classics Illustrated!! What am I supposed to do with this? Look at the pictures? Like some kind of ANIMAL!?! Blast these careless sellers who list their stuff wrong. How they inconvenience and annoy me! Can't they pay a little attention so that I do not have to deal with their incompetence?

Well I tell you what, I marched right upstairs and sat down at my computer to send a message to that mistake maker and tell them what’s what. And when I opened my Amazon account to look at the transaction, I saw that that silly graphic novel was the book I had ordered. There was a picture and everything. Darn.

So, turns out the mistake maker was me. I always think about how, in many interactions everyday, one or both parties will come out of it thinking that the other person is an idiot. And I have decided that is is very good for me to be reminded that, AT LEAST half of the time, the idiot is me.

So, what did I do in this instance? I said "Forget It!" and I'm reading Great Expectations instead.

I don't have anything imparticular to say. (Spell checker says imparticular ain't a word. I'da thunk it were!) But I figured I should post a picture of Harrison in his Halloween costume.

For those of you who are uncultured and depraved, he is an X-Wing Pilot. (Star Wars.) Thanks for the costume Jessie. (And thanks for the pictures Lynsie!) And I reckon I oughtta put a picture of us here too. If you don't know what we are, it is a shame, but don't feel too bad. Almost nobody did - which is, again, a shame! We are part of Buy More's Nerd Herd. From Chuck! We are not associated with the NSA, CIA or Fulcrum but if you've got a technical question or problem, we've got the answer! Buy More's Nerd Herd: Bringing Peace to your computer world.

You probably thought I was going to stop now, didn't you. I could, but I haven't mentioned a few very important items. A couple days before Halloween was a Stake Young Men and Women's Halloween party. A pretty average party: cake walks, costume parades, you know, the usually. But then they taught us the dance from Thriller. I was pretty ecstatic. I came home and watched the video and realized that what they taught us wasn't actually the Thriller dance, but a line dance based on the Thriller dance. It's ok though, because now I have the framework from which I can learn and perfect the whole dance the zombies do and then I will be AWESOME!!! So keep a lookout. If, in the future, you see an awesome person doing the Thriller dance on the street, it is probably me. Because I'm not going to be able to hold that level of awesomeness inside.

Sometimes I wonder how I look when I am not doing anything requiring facial expressions. When people pass me on the street, what do they see? When I am sitting by myself, what kind of face am I making? What is my Resting Expression? Sometimes I worry that I am usually scowling, that my normal resting expression is kind of an angry one. I will feel myself making an angry face and I will have to force myself to raise by eyebrows out of their lowered and scowling position, unhunch my shoulders and relax my features into a more a calm expression, so that everyone that sees me doesn’t wonder “What on earth is she so angry for?”

So I think about that sometimes, but I was wrong about the angry face. Turns out THIS is my resting expression. Yep. And that, apparently, is the expression Richard makes. We are a lovely couple, aren’t we?

This is a picture taken on the way home from Martin’s Cove, Wyoming. On a Greyhound Bus, just like the pioneers!